Topic outline

  • General

    Collapse all Expand all

    • And so, ‘tis the season!

      The firelogs are crackling, the chill has fallen upon us and the marshmallows are poised and ready for the toasting! And to commemorate the start of the festive winter season, we decided to bestow you all with the best gift there is - the gift of knowledge! Course design knowledge, to be precise.

      Starting today and up until the 16th of December, our e-Learning experts at Catalyst EU will be sharing 12 top tips to refresh your course design. How to keep your content organised and up to date, fostering collaborative learning, helping your students to stay engaged and on-track, and much, much more!

      Each day we will reveal the next step on how to enhance your course, so make sure to check back every day, and please do share your work - the more the merrier! And if you have any questions please reach out using the #12DaysOfCatalyst hashtag on Twitter or LinkedIn; we’ll be more than happy to help you with your course design needs.

  • Day 6

    • Identify self assessment/reflection tasks

      As a former lecturer myself, I often worried about how my learners were doing. Did they understand my taught session? Did they understand the assigned reading? Did they get what I wanted them to get from a practical task? Luckily Totara and Moodle have many built in tools to help both the learner and the teachers/trainers keep track on progress.

      During lockdown, many lecturers expressed concerns that they were 'over assessing' and sometimes even tripling their workload by giving weekly assignment tasks that they had to grade. My advice - flip it around - let your LMS do the quick feedback for you!

      Having multiple points during a course for learners to 'check-in' and see how they're doing will really help them when it comes to the assessed tasks that do count towards their final grade. I came across the video below many years ago and it still rings true now:

      Analogy between education and chicken feeding


      In summary - don't wait to the end to see if your learners have understood the material; it could be too late to do anything.

      Tools for your consideration:

      • Quizzes
        - did you know you can create a bank of questions and pull them into a quiz at random?
        Find out about questions banks (Totara and Moodle)

      • Feedback tool
        - ask your learners to self reflect and respond to open-ended questions. Once complete you can present model answers. Using the feedback tool you won't need to give them a grade.

      • H5P
        - so many options available to you for creating quizzes and activities (see some examples here). Here's a simple one that took 2 mins to set up:


      With H5P you have a number of options for use:


      'Keeping tabs'
      Make the time to monitor how your learners are doing by reviewing the reports and activity completion progress. Is there one activity that your learners struggled with as a group? Would organising a quick 20min seminar help clear up any confusion? Maybe include a forum for learners to post where they felt unsure and have their peers help them.

      So many options!


      Suggested by Sam Taylor, Senior eLearning Consultant and MEC Facilitator